Puerto Ricans in Chicago are people living in Chicago who have ancestral connections to the island of Puerto Rico. They have contributed to the economic, social and cultural well-being of Chicago for more than seventy years. History The Puerto Rican community in Chicago has a history that stretches back more than 70 years. The first migration to Chicago, in the 1930s, was not from the island of Puerto Rico itself but from New York City. Many settled on State Street just south of the downtown hotels. There only a small number of people joined this migration. The first large wave of migration to Chicago came in the late 1940s, when many settled in the La Clark neighborhood around Dearborn, La Salle and Clark Streets just north of downtown Chicago. Starting in 1946, many people were recruited by Castle Barton Associates and other companies as low-wage, non-union foundry workers and domestic workers in hotels and private homes. As soon as they were established in Chicago, many were joined by their spouses and families. The Puerto Rican neighborhoods of Wicker Park and Lincoln were one large neighborhood that became divided when the Kennedy Expressway was built in the late 1950s. By the 1960s, Chicago's Puerto Rican community was displaced by urban redevelopment; they moved north and west to Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, and Wicker Park, later centering in West Town and Humboldt Park on the city's West Side. They first moved into nearby Lincoln Park just over the Chicago River. Puerto Rican settlement also occurred in Lawndale, also on the city's West Side. City hall-sponsored gentrification in Lincoln Park began in the early 1960s and was protested by a Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition led by the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez. The Puerto Rican community then moved north and west. The events of June 12 through 14, 1966, the Division Street riots, constituted the first major Puerto Rican urban rebellion in Chicago. The uprising took place about the time that the Chicago Police Department began taking "precautionary measures" to head off potential unrest of the type that had already occurred in African American centers such as Harlem, Watts and North Philadelphia. In 1977, the Puerto Rican community came into conflict with the Chicago Police Department again at the Humboldt Park riot. Present The Puerto Rican community is well established and politically active. With the support